In her most revealing interview about Cory yet, Lea teared up on ‘Ellen’ when she revealed why Cory was the ‘greatest’ man in the world — and spoke about how he gave her advice on her upcoming album, ‘Louder,’ before his tragic death. Click to watch.

It’s almost been five months since the tragic loss of Cory, but Lea has worked through the pain to honor his memory by staying strong. She opened up about dealing with his death by writing a song dedicated to him on her new album, and expressed how thankful she is to Kate Hudson and Glee creator Ryan Murphy for being “wonderful” friends during such a hard time. You can read her interview with Ellen DeGeneres below:

“She was so wonderful to basically give her home to myself and my family. It was so helpful to just basically have a safe place to process and just have a minute to just breathe before getting back to my house, which just has a lot of memories and stuff, so being someplace else to just have a moment was really nice.”

On paparazzi watching her every move:

“It’s pretty intense. And then if you smile it’s like, ‘She’s so happy,’ and you know if you look sad they’re like, ‘She’s terrible.’ It’s just really hard. There’s so many different emotions and to kind of have people watching every step of the way. But to have that time at [Kate’s] home to just really be in private with this for a moment before getting back to work and before going home…I’m just so thankful to her.”

On going back to work on the Glee set after Cory’s death:

“Ryan Murphy, who is so amazing, came to Kate’s house and he said, ‘What do you want to do, whatever you want to do we’ll do.’ I said I have to go back to work. We have to. [The Glee cast] is my family and what people also don’t understand is that going to work is no harder than being at home and being in the house and opening up a closet and seeing a pair of shoes. There’s this grief that goes with you everyday whatever you’re doing. Whether there’s great moments or hard moments so I’d rather, for me, be at work with the people who I love. It obviously has its own triggers, but at the end of the day, I feel so safe there. And like I said, they’re my family.”

On dealing with grief after Cory’s Glee tribute:

“I really feel like I’m still trying to figure out all of this. It’s been only a few months, but my mom has experienced a lot of loss in her life and she told me at one point that there is an empowerment that comes with grief, and at some point you find it. It’s very hard, but you will find it, and I think at a certain point you can choose to sort of fall from this or you can choose to rise. And that’s what I’m just trying to do — do my best for him — because I know that that’s what he would have wanted and to just do my best and to you know, hopefully make something positive for where I go in the rest of my life.”

On Cory admitting that they were a couple on a Dec. 6 2012 episode of Ellen:

“It’s one of my favorite memories. I remember when he came home that night, he kind of puffed out his chest and he was like, ‘I talked about you on Ellen today’ and I was so happy. He’s such a private person and I literally lived every day of my life feeling like the luckiest girl in the whole world. I just thought he was the greatest man and so at that moment, that memory, it means so much to me.”

On Lea’s first solo album, Louder, being very personal to her:

“I’ve performed on the “Glee” tour. We did world tours, we did the Staples Center and I sang at Super Bowl, and this is different. I find that this is a very personal album for me. I didn’t record any songs that were not personal to me or that did not mean something to me. So everything I’m singing, I’m letting [fans] a little bit into my life. So there are a lot of aspects to it that make it kind of scary.”

On Cory’s involvement with Louder and writing a song on her album dedicated to him, called “If You Say So”:

“I started working on [my album], I believe, during September of last year. I finished it in June. It was supposed to come out this summer but it got postponed…but I’m really happy because Cory got to hear all but two songs on the record and he had notes all the time when I would come home and play him a song. We would sit in the car and listen to it, because it had the best sound system. Then after everything happened I met with Sia, who is incredible, and she said, ‘Do you want to write anything about this?’ And I think one of the hardest things is the feeling like you’re going to forget everything, so I felt it was important to just take a moment to see what we could come up with. We came up with a beautiful song called “If You Say So” that I wrote about Cory.

Then in that same meeting, she said to me, “But how are you feeling in this moment right now?’ I explained how grief really just…you can get sucked into it. You can literally lose yourself if you don’t actually die from it. You can lose yourself completely. And I said to her, ‘I need to get out. I need to get out of my house. He would want me to live my life. I have to do this’. She said, ‘Oh, that’s so crazy ’cause I wrote this song. It’s called “Cannonball” and you just said the lyrics. She played it for me, and the minute I heard the song, it lifted me up. It picked me up from everything.” And it has been my source of strength. And like I said, he would want me to make something positive out of it. So if I can be a source of strength to anyone, that is exactly what he would want.

What do YOU think of Lea’s interview, HollywoodLifers? Are you inspired by Lea’s strength after Cory’s death? Let us know!

Side Note: For those into fashion, Lea Michele wore a FROCK Los Angeles dress during her appearance.